Throwback Weekend at Darlington Raceway is one of the bigger weekends of the early part of the NASCAR season. Unfortunately, quite a few of the drivers are under the belief that the whole thing has become passe.
Sunday’s (April 6) race was something of a throwback in its own right. William Byron had the field covered for most of the day. Had he gotten a caution prior to the final round of stops under green, it’s possible that he could have led every lap.
A situation like that in NASCAR is rare, especially these days. There are a couple of ways in which you can treat it. One is to consider it the racing equivalent of a pitcher throwing a no-hitter. Another is to groan about it. This is how Clint Bowyer perceived the race. It was clear to me that he wanted to see more action. Mike Joy and Kevin Harvick were somewhere in the middle.
It’s a situation in which you need to do your best to show a decent amount of action. During the time that Richard Petty was in the booth Sunday, he actually griped about the lack of action on the broadcasts. Specifically, he talked about the action further down the order that was seemingly the best on the track that you couldn’t see at home.
Joy noted that they try to show some of that when they can, then pitched it as an incentive to make the trip to the track. Unfortunately, doing that can conflict with some of the storylines that they planned to cover. On a day like Sunday, deviating might have been a good move.
Sure, it’s nice to go to a race, but most people don’t have that opportunity. The broadcasts are likely the only way that they’re going to be able to watch the sport. To emulate Muffy (Jami Gertz) from the 1982 CBS sitcom Square Pegs, it behooves FOX Sports to make its race broadcasts as exciting as possible.
As Petty indicated, this was another one of those events in which it was probably quite a bit better in person than it was on FOX Sports 1. NASCAR’s Loop Data indicates that overall passing was about equal to last year. That race had 16 lead changes as opposed to the four on Sunday. If you’re wondering, the four lead changes are tied for the least ever at Darlington with the 1950 Southern 500 (there’s also one race with unavailable lead change statistics).
Most of the discussion that I’ve read about the race talked about the importance of clean air. It isn’t anything that fans really want to hear much about. Now, if you had a tire advantage, you could definitely make waves. Ryan Blaney is proof of that when he made up 17 seconds on merit to snatch the lead away from Tyler Reddick. Outside of the pit sequences, it was hard to make moves.
There was only a little discussion of that fact on the broadcast. Viewers were likely aware of the lack of movement at times since the same guys were up front for much of the race. Then, after the caution during pit stops, another group came to the forefront.
FOX Sports did a great job showing what happened to Brad Keselowski on Sunday. Once again, the wheel nut issue came into play. The camera shots were perfect. You could see the nut fly off the car and cause the spin.
Brad Keselowski goes around! #NASCARonFS1 pic.twitter.com/xn02vNatBg
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) April 6, 2025
Keselowski did an excellent job getting the car back to the pits without the wheel coming off. He ultimately had to drive a little over a full lap without the nut on the right rear wheel to get back around. Yes, he had a flat tire by that point and he ended up three laps down, but we know that it could have been worse.
Now, I have no doubt that fans were upset that NASCAR threw the caution five laps later to retrieve the wheel nut before the round of stops was complete, given where the nut came to rest. That ultimately swung the race and trapped a number of contenders (Ryan Preece, Bubba Wallace, etc.) a lap down. None of them were able to get back in contention after taking the wave around. Byron avoided this fate since he hadn’t pitted yet when the yellow came out.
Prior to the race, there were two pieces of note on NASCAR RaceDay. One saw Joey Logano talking about how he originally learned how to race at Darlington. As an 18-year-old rookie, he got one-on-one instruction from the late Cale Yarborough, a man who was local to Darlington for most of his life and today has an interchange on Interstate 95 named after him. Pretty much the perfect man to ask for advice.
We also heard from a couple of the NASCAR Alumni present at the track this weekend. In a Frontstretch YouTube video, Ron Hornaday Jr. did not hold back regarding what he thinks about some of the up-and-coming drivers. Thankfully, Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race had much less in the way of shenanigans as compared to Martinsville Speedway.
Post-race coverage was relatively brief. Viewers got interviews with Byron, Blaney and Denny Hamlin. FS1 might have wanted to talk to Reddick as well, but I don’t think he talked to anyone after the race. There was also some post-race analysis before FOX Sports left Darlington.
I came away from Sunday’s race still a bit frustrated in regard to the action shown. I get that clean air was an issue. It can be from time to time, but I don’t know if I’ve heard it mentioned this much in Cup since the Next Gen car showed up.
That said, this race looked boring at times. It’s never great to hear discussion of a race being a dud, but I’m sure that there was action to be had. As Petty said, you have to look for it. For much of Sunday’s race, FS1 didn’t look for it. That frustrates me and more than likely frustrated Petty as well.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend is going to be a very busy weekend. NASCAR has a tripleheader at Bristol Motor Speedway. NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series teams will race Friday night, followed by Xfinity on Saturday. The Cup Series will race for 500 laps on Sunday afternoon.
Outside of Bristol, this weekend is the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. The NTT IndyCar Series is the main show there, but the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and GT America powered by AWS are on the undercard. Formula 1 will also make its annual visit to Bahrain with Formula 2 and Formula 3 in support. TV listings can be found here.
We will have a critique of Sunday’s Food City 500 in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. The Critic’s Annex will cover Saturday’s Sport Clips Haircuts VFW Help A Hero 200 for the Xfinity Series.
If you have a gripe with me or just want to say something about my critique, feel free to post in the comments below. Even though I can’t always respond, I do read your comments. Also, if you want to “like” me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, please click on the appropriate icons. If you would like to contact either of NASCAR’s media partners, click on either of the links below.
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Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the Frontstretch email newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the Frontstretch Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.
Too bad they kept drowning the Petty’s interview by not turning down the ambient engine noise. Your reference to Joy’s comments about attending races; I’ve been to some. That was back when they started about 12:30 or 1 and you had enough time to spend getting out of all the traffic, spend a few hours driving, and get home at a decent hour to be able to work on Monday. It’s all built around the TV schedule now.
I completely agree with Phil’s assessment that Fox needs to find the action. F1, because the cars have a tendency to “parade” at certain tracks, is quite good at this. No action in the top ten? Show the battle for 13th!
The negative comments from some fans about the quality of racing don’t make sense to me though. These are often the same folks who are always harkening back to “the good old days”. I remember many times Waltrip/Petty/Earnhardt/Allison, etc, just checked out on the field, often lapping cars well within the top ten. That’s part of motor racing, and it was always impressive to see, even if it was a driver I didn’t care for. Heck, Bill Elliott once made up two laps, UNDER GREEN, to win a race, and he regularly destroyed the field on speedways and superspeedways.
I’d much rather see a more pure form of racing than the usual contrived close races modern NASCAR has a tendency to orchestrate. That said, it’s obvious why NASCAR does it…people complain if they don’t. But to me, if a car and driver combo are better than the competition, they should be heralded for it, not buried under comments about how “boring” it was.
I think the broadcast is what makes it boring. Just watching the leader check out for 4 hours and not seeing anything other than a 1 car parade is not really very exciting. Slight exaggeration to make a point, but not by much. When there are 40 cars on track and you only see and hear about 10 or 15 of them…
Agree on seeing the races unfold naturally without the unnecessary intervention, and also that F1 and Indycar do a better job keeping track of action further back. Although I am skeptical that Fox coverage won’t start to change that for Indy. Hope I’m wrong.
Agree on all fronts. Coverage needs to be better, and yeah, Fox’s coverage for Indycar seems to be a turn for the worse. I like that they’re doing a ton to promote the sport, but the actual race coverage seems like they’re doing the same thing they do with NASCAR. Cover the top five, maybe the top ten, even if nothing is happening and there’s competitive racing deeper in the pack.
Gotta give the sponsors for Hendrick, Gibbs, and Penske all the air time. If another team gets in the shot for a brief glimpse of their sponsor, they should consider themselves lucky they aren’t blurred out in the broadcast.
Not showing the real racing back in the pack is a sin that most all of the networks commit. When one car is way ahead of the racing, it is NOT ‘exciting’ to focus on that one car. Unless there is some actual challenge going on up front, get the cameras back where the actual racing is. Are the networks really so clueless about what makes a race interesting? It doesn’t matter if the battle is for first place or twenty second. Hard racing is what we want to see.
I get tired of hearing Mike Joy’s stories about racing in the northeast back in the day. I’m ready for Adam Alexander to take over play by play.
i fell asleep……same guy leading majority of the race and at times he was quarter a lap ahead of everyone.
we hear all the time clean air….blah blah blah.
tire wear … blah blah blah
only thing we didn’t hear about was mother nature!
i thought what hornaday and skinner said was spot on. just by the fact that these drivers have mentioned they’re bored with throwback race. i think some of them need to look at old broadcasts and see how those guys raced and under what conditions. they didn’t have cool shirts or “a/c”.
my question is…..was hamlin speeding on pit road and nascar looked the other way.
We all know Denny was, no need to wonder. Nascar has proved it fixes races.
He was in between timing lines, and took advantage of it.
When they were showing Harvick and Bowyer driving the old Wood Bros cars I told my kids that I would have loved to see them race these cars at the Southern 500 in 90 degree heat without any cool suits. They’d be crying for a relief driver by lap 50.
Not saying NASCAR didn’t interfere, but what would the motivation be in skewing the race to favor the guy who is suing them?
We rode with the #6 quite often via the Castrol in-car camera. No idea what place Brad was in, but he sure got plenty of TV time. Even when Fox showed cars racing for positions behind the leader(s), they rarely showed any graphics above the cars to show what position they were actually in.
Listening to Harvick ramble for 3 laps about the fine art of setups when he should be calling the race, is unacceptable. Mike Joy has the impossible task of handling the commercials and sponsor plugs. He can’t focus on watching the race with someone prompting ads every 30 seconds.
Darlington was the perfect example of a race becoming more and more like a 4 hour infomercial. No need to watch anything until the last 20 laps. Even then, Blaney gets bitten by the NASCAR OVERTIME!!! 3 LAP SHOOTOUT!!! manufactured excitement bug.